Akamai lets you monitor Net traffic, attacks

What does the Internet look like? A free new Web service from Akamai Technologies Inc. offers a peek, providing a sort of Internet weather report on global traffic tie-ups, cyberattacks, and spikes in activity.

Akamai, which says it delivers 15 to 20 percent of Internet traffic on any given day, hopes its new website helps not only the techies it counts as clients, but the general public.

If your Internet connection is slower than usual, Akamai’s tool can show whether traffic is clogged overall in your city. (If not, your Internet service provider might be to blame.) Or you might just want a way to visualize the global ebb and flow.

‘‘We originally built this feature as a tool for our customers, but once it was built it seemed like a fun thing to put out there to the public,’’ said Tom Leighton, Akamai’s chief scientist.

The service, at http://tinyurl.com/yooz96, reveals some of the data engineers at Akamai’s Cambridge headquarters rely on.

The tool shows the 10 cities with the slowest Web connections at any given moment, and ranks the regions facing the most network attacks. Other sections measure traffic on digital music, retail, and news websites.
(AP)